Virginia Breeze

, originally uploaded by Davidlind.

We are back in Richmond tonight.  Here’s a photo from this morning.  I woke up about 4:30 and the person next to me was still sleeping.  I slipped out and walked down to the beach.  Nothing was on my mind.  I was blank.   And I was watching this ship on the horizon.  After awhile it reached a point where the horizon started to glow a little bit and I thought “this must be where the sun is going to arrive”.

I am eating tapioca pudding through a straw as I write these words. I can’t feel my lips. Here’s what you do after several novacaine shots to avoid having the inside of you mouth for lunch. Stick one end of the straw in the little plastic cup of pudding and then stick the other end in the corner of your mouth. Then close your mouth and put one hand over your mouth to create a secure environment. And then inhale through the straw.

It’s actually pretty good. It’s a lot easier than drinking ice tea in a glass I can tell you for sure.

Driving home after going to the dentist is pretty unusual too. Because when I have teeth worked on I require a large serving of Nitrous Oxide. And when that baby kicks in I can sit there looking exactly like a middle aged guy having some dental work. But on the inside there is some VERY weird stuff happening.

As those of you who have been following along here are probably not too surprised to learn.

There is something about Nitrous that in my limited experience makes it the best of all drugs. Here’s what it does.

On Nitrous anything that I think about easily can become the subject of a some sort of internal spiritual or philosophic conversation. At one point today I realized that time had stopped. There were two other people in the room but they didn’t seem to notice. All I remember is that it was like standing in the middle of a hologram. Only the hologram was “real” and not the other way around.

I do remember thinking that whenever “I” had a revelation immediately there would be the understanding that “I” wasn’t real. You can”t know stuff for long in my Nitrous Oxide Universe because “you” keeps disappearing.

Nothing seemed very real after awhile.

But then the universe is billions of years old. Multiply our lifetimes by a thousand years and it is not a significant amount of time compared to the age of the universe. So how real are we or any of the things we know?

So NO2 is fun but you can’t drift too far off. There is always somebody with a finger on a vital spot making sure you are not going too far away. They keep tapping you like you are some kind of Morse Code device. Don’t fade out! Or you will be breathing oxygen without the N2 very quickly.

Now the teeth are fixed and the pain has gone away. Modern dentistry is just amazing! I appreciate it so much. I bow down to my dentist. And to his assistant who I invited to the Bahamas this summer.

Unfortunately she can’t make it.

Oh well. They ought to replace all the alcohol out there with NO2. And then build little stations that you can put next to you favorite chair or your bed. Outlaw booze. But replace it with something better.

A lot of problems would be solved if they did this. Too bad it will never come to pass.

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What are some of the problems (if any) you see being solved if NO2 replaced alcohol?